


A Lifetime is Never Enough

by paperstorm



Series: Under the Dome [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Beards (Facial Hair), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nomad Steve Rogers, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Romance, Wakanda (Marvel), White Wolf Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 16:49:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20100439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: Bucky reaches for him with his hand, eyes still closed, and Steve curls up against his side. Bucky’s arm goes around him, fingers sliding up to tangle in Steve’s hair. The sleep-warmed skin of his neck is a heavenly place for Steve to rest his forehead, tension going out of his limbs and greedily breathing in Bucky’s smell, his warmth, the safety his bed offers.





	A Lifetime is Never Enough

**Author's Note:**

> My 200th fic! Is that an achievement or should I make some friends.
> 
> This is just a bit of fluff inspired by this scene of Chris looking all kinds of Nomad Steve in the Red Sea Diving Resort.
> 
>   
  
  
[Gifs by forchrisevans on tumblr](https://forchrisevans.tumblr.com/post/186674311244/chris-evans-in-the-red-sea-diving-resort)
> 
> Title is from the lyric _So here's to the ghosts, here's to the games that we lost and we love, we come and we go, but a lifetime is never enough_ from the song Stay by Alan Doyle.

Steve is on what feels like less than his last legs by the time he lands the jet at the palace airstrip and taxis it carefully into the spot in the hanger that’s been reserved for him for the last year. He gets a brief nod of recognition from the guard on duty, acknowledgement that she knows who he is. They’re always so stoic, at least when they’re working. Steve’s sure they have emotions and personalities when they aren’t. He smiles tiredly at her, but she doesn’t return it.  
  
“Tough night?” a female voice asks from his left, as he exits the hanger, mentally preparing himself for the walk to the border. It’s not a short walk, and his legs are already shaking underneath him from exhaustion. He’d been briefly considering sleeping for an hour or two in the quinjet just to mitigate the possibility of collapsing mid-way on a busy street. While he feels in some ways like he hasn’t had a decent night sleep since 1943, he also can’t remember the last time he was run quite this ragged. Every inhale and blink feels like it takes more strength than he has left at this point.  
  
He looks over, and sees Shuri, perched on what looks like a motorcycle, if it was built a thousand years into the future by a society far more advanced than their own. Which, Steve figures, given where he is, is only half false. Her dark eyes peer at him from underneath the visor of a sleek, white helmet.  
  
“What are you doing here?” he asks. It’s after 4 in the morning.  
  
“Couldn’t sleep, so I was playing,” she answers, with a shrug. In her world, _playing _means messing around in her lab, inventing miraculous things out of an idea and an hour or two of work as if it’s as easy as making a sandwich. “Saw your jet come in from the window. Want a ride?”  
  
“Oh, no, you don’t …” he starts, protesting on principle more than on an actual desire to struggle to put one foot in front of the other for the next 30 minutes. Normally he doesn’t mind the walk. Tonight it feels like it could kill him.  
  
She waves her hand, brushing off his objection. Bluntly, she says, “you look like shit, Cap. Get on the bike.”  
  
Steve exhales, and stumbles over on wobbly knees, settling gratefully onto the vehicle behind her. She speeds off once he’s settled and holding on, the engine whisper quiet but humming gently underneath his legs.  
  
“Another terror plot foiled?” she asks, raising her voice to be heard over the rush of wind past their ears.  
  
“Cartel boss,” he answers, closing his eyes against the sting of the breeze. They fly through the streets, faster than any motorbike Steve has ever been on, Shuri expertly weaving the bike around structures and trees and other vehicles with the ease of a gentle stroll.  
  
“That doesn’t sound fun.”  
  
“It wasn’t.” Steve sighs again. Thinks back to only hours ago, to covertly leaving the man tied up outside the police station and then waiting out of sight for him to be discovered. It’s tricky, what he does with Sam and Natasha since the Avengers disbanded. They aren’t authorized to do it at all anymore, so the necessity of not being discovered is an added layer of complication. “The cops are just as corrupt, sometimes, down there. Can’t exactly guarantee they’ll do anything about him either. And we can’t just assassinate him. Sometimes I think we aren’t helping very much.”  
  
“You’re trying,” she replies, as if it really is that simple. “All you can do is your best.”  
  
Steve doesn’t answer.  
  
In only minutes the bike is out of the city, speeding off into pastoral lands with trees along the edges of tilled fields. The familiar smell hits Steve’s nostrils; clean air, lush vegetation, the fresh scent of water nearby. The brown structures that make up the border tribe come into view in the distance, blurry in the darkness but approaching quickly. She slows the bike at the edge, unable to pass over the fence and not needing to wake anyone up to open the gate because Steve can just jump it. He has before, dozens of times, when he’s arrived in the middle of the night. The residents are used to him.  
  
“Thank you,” he says genuinely, as he dismounts and runs his hands over his hair. It must be beyond windswept.  
  
“Tell him to visit, would you?” Shuri asks. “I don’t see him so much anymore.”  
  
“I’m sure it’s not personal. He just doesn’t want to bother you.”  
  
“That’s what personal means. Tell him he’s an idiot.”  
  
Steve grins and laughs a little. “Yeah. I sure will.”  
  
“My brother,” she adds, with an eyeroll, “would be over the moon if the esteemed Captain Rogers paid _him _a visit. Knock out two beasts with one arrow and come see us both.”  
  
“You got it.”  
  
She nods decisively at him, flicks the visor on her helmet back down, and speeds away.  
  
Steve waits until she’s out of sight, and then bends to go under the top rung of the fence instead of going over it. Normally he could hop it like it was no higher than a curb on a sidewalk, but tonight he can barely summon the energy to hold his head up. He moves quietly through the huts until he gets to Bucky’s, pushing back the curtain over the rounded doorway and ducking inside. Bucky is asleep, on his back with his chest bare and his hand resting on his stomach. A woven blanket covers his lower half, with his feet and ankles sticking out the bottom. Steve smiles the moment he sees him. Always does, like a reflex. It means everything that Bucky can be as relaxed as that, here. That he can sleep at all.  
  
Bucky means home. Bucky’s always meant home, since they were kids in Brooklyn. This place looks nothing like their old tenement walk-up did, but it’s still the home Steve has been aching for since he put a plane into the ocean and woke up six decades into the future.  
  
He strips, with shaky hands, out of his dirty uniform, tugging at buckles and straps, needing a second go at a few of them because his fingers are too weak to work properly. Bucky stirs as Steve is stepping out of his boots. He doesn’t open his eyes, but his lips curve into a small smile that Steve can only just see through the darkness.  
  
“Hey, Steve,” he whispers.  
  
Steve’s heart skips a beat, or maybe several. Sneaking in when it’s the middle of the night hadn’t gone so well the first few times, Bucky still nervous and jumpy and expecting danger around every corner, but he’s used to that now. He knows the difference in sound, between Steve coming in and an intruder, even if he’s half-asleep.  
  
Steve crawls into the bed beside him, tired limbs nearly shouting in relief as he finally gets off his feet and can relax his aching muscles. He leans over and kisses Bucky’s metal shoulder, the empty socket where his arm attaches when he wears it, which still isn’t often, and then kisses the skin just above where the metal ends. He tries to do that at least once every time he visits, a wordless reminder that he loves him and accepts the scars left over from decades of torture and doesn’t think Bucky is worth less because of what was done to him. Bucky reaches for him with his hand, eyes still closed, and Steve curls up against his side. Bucky’s arm goes around him, fingers sliding up to tangle in Steve’s hair. The sleep-warmed skin of his neck is a heavenly place for Steve to rest his forehead, tension going out of his limbs and greedily breathing in Bucky’s smell, his warmth, the safety his bed offers.  
  
The last thing he’s aware of is Bucky’s lips pressing to his forehead, before he’s tugged into sleep.  
  
Light shining in through the vent in the ceiling and landing across his face pulls Steve reluctantly back to consciousness. He doesn’t move for a minute at first, hoping if he hangs onto the dream he’d been having, he’ll fall back into it. He doesn’t, and realizes the beeping of machines in Tony’s lab at the tower is actually birds chirping outside. Steve presses his lips together, and pushes the dream away. He doesn’t want it anymore.  
  
He lifts his head and looks behind himself, over his shoulder, surprised when he finds he’s alone. He yawns widely, and stretches, and pushes the blankets back so he can get his legs out from under them. It’s too hot for blankets, anyway. It’s another minute before he’s fully with it, and he spends it rubbing the sleep from his eyes and stretching again, hands over his head this time, the muscles in his back appreciating the elongation.  
  
He looks up in the direction of a scream from outside, heart leaping into his throat just for a brief second before it’s followed by laughter, and he recognizes it as the sound, not of danger, but of children playing. Steve gets up, finding a pair of robes to wrap around himself to cover his nakedness. He dips his hands into lukewarm water from the basin in the corner, rubbing it over his face and hair, attempting to make himself halfway presentable before he goes off in search of Bucky, but not really succeeding. The reflection that greets him in the mirror would have horrified him even a few years ago. His beard is long and his hair is longer, enough to tuck behind his ears in the front, the ends of it touching his shoulders and flipping up. He finds he likes it. Likes, in a strange way, that he doesn’t look like the clean-cut Captain America of legend anymore. Because he isn’t. That person was a myth, anyway. It was never really Steve. It was just a symbol, a romantic imagining of who he was supposed to be and what his very existence was supposed to represent.  
  
Another burst of bright, shrill laughter, this time joined by another voice that Steve instantly recognizes as Bucky’s. He’d recognize that bright, sparkly laugh anywhere.  
  
He pushes the cloth door-covering back and steps out into the bright sunlight. A few yards away, Bucky is kicking a ball around with a group of children; three of them, Steve counts, as they scamper around him and try to steal it from him with their much smaller feet. Bucky darts, athletic and agile, kicking the ball to one side and faking around one of the children so he can collect it on their other side as it rolls past them. His hair bounces around his shoulders, red robe billowing in the slight breeze, and his face lights up as one of the kids does manage to get the ball from him with a tricky maneuver and the others cheer.  
  
Steve leans against the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head to one side as he watches. Bucky’s hair is pulled half-back off his face, the top layer in a braid. One of the kids must have done that for him. He’s mastered the art of pulling his hair into a messy knot with a hair-tie, but Steve doubts he could braid with only one hand. Warmth, that has nothing to do with the sunshine, spreads to his extremities.  
  
The girl in the group notices him after a moment, her eyes going wide and her squeaky voice calling, “Mister America!” It makes the others look up, and then their game is abandoned as they all sprint toward him, each trying to get to him first.  
  
Once they’re all within reach, he reaches down and scoops all three up at once into his arms, and six skinny arms go around him in a tight, squirmy hug. “Are you showing the White Wolf how it’s done?” he asks them, as he sets them back down on the ground.  
  
“He’s not as good as me,” a boy says boastfully, and the girl who spotted Steve first smacks his arm.  
  
“That’s not nice!” she admonishes.  
  
From across the way, a woman calls for them, yelling about being late for school, and the kids obediently rush off toward her, shouting their goodbyes to Bucky as they pass him.  
  
“Everyone’s a critic,” he remarks, as he bends down to pick up the ball.  
  
Steve smiles at him. He must look ridiculous, standing there with a dopey grin on his face like he’s a sap from a romantic movie, hopelessly in love. But he is. Has been for pretty damn close to a century.  
  
“I was hoping you’d sleep longer,” Bucky says, walking towards Steve. He drops the ball against the wall of his hut. “I had to make sure you were still breathing, when I woke up. You were dead to the world.”  
  
“Still kinda am,” Steve admits. He’ll nap later. He can’t have gotten more than a few hours of sleep, and it’s not nearly as much as he needed.  
  
“Yeah, you look it.”  
  
“Thanks,” Steve tells him, chuckling.  
  
Bucky smiles, too.  
  
Steve reaches his hand out and Bucky takes it, letting himself be pulled in. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and threads his fingers together to keep him there, and Bucky’s hand brushes hair off Steve’s forehead and blinks up at him.  
  
“Not what I meant,” he says softly. “Handsome as ever.”  
  
“I don’t know about that. I’m pretty gross right now.” Steve wrinkles his nose, but Bucky just keeps smiling at him.  
  
“I don’t think I’ve stopped sweating for two straight months. Still not used to this heat, and that’s saying something after summers in Brooklyn.”  
  
Steve can smell that on him, a little sweet and a little spicy, but doesn’t mind at all. It’s familiar, so it’s comforting.  
  
Bucky’s fingers trace through Steve’s beard, petting him gently, and then a flicker of sympathy passes over his face. “What time did you get in last night?”  
  
“Probably about 4:30, by the time I was actually in bed.”  
  
“When’s the last time you slept longer than three hours?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Steve answers honestly.  
  
Bucky exhales slowly through his nose, hand cupping Steve’s cheek. He leans into it and closes his eyes. “Go back to bed,” Bucky says, in close enough that Steve can feel breath on his face, the ghost of a kiss before it happens. “You know you’re safe here.”  
  
“More important that you are.”  
  
“Not to me.” When Bucky’s lips do press into Steve’s, it’s soft and they linger.  
  
“Come with me?” Steve asks, feeling small and stupid but saying it out loud anyway. “You can leave once I pass out, I just …”  
  
“What?” Bucky prompts gently.  
  
“Just want you. Want you close.”  
  
“It was a bad one, huh?” Bucky asks, without pushing for details.  
  
Steve shudders a little, and can’t answer. Compartmentalizing is the only way he keeps going, when sometimes it feels far too much like he deals in blood and pain and failure.  
  
“C’mon,” Bucky says softly, nudging Steve backwards through the doorway.  
  
Steve lets himself be led back to the bed, back down into the pile of blankets, and Bucky lies with him, head on Steve’s shoulder and arm draped protectively across his middle. He noses under Steve’s jaw, through his thick beard, inhaling him. Steve hugs his arms tight around Bucky’s back, lips resting against Bucky’s hairline.  
  
“Wanna tell me?” Bucky offers.  
  
Steve shakes his head. Sometimes he does. And maybe he will later. This just isn’t the moment. He hadn’t realized how tired he still was until he lied back down.  
  
“Okay.” Bucky’s hand moves over Steve’s chest, slipping beneath the robe so he can touch bare skin.  
  
“Kiss me?” Steve asks, and Bucky does, tilting his face up for a kiss that steals Steve’s breath. Their lips slide, a familiar give and take of flesh and wet tongues and shared air. Steve wants to roll them over so Bucky is underneath him, his body warm and solid and yielding when Steve’s asks it to be, to bask in his radiance and kiss him until they cease to be separate entities. Bucky is his anchor, and it’s not fair to ask him to continue the role after everything he’s been through, after everything Hydra did to him and took from him, but Steve asks it anyway, because he’s not as selfless as people think and he’s never been any good at playing fair where Bucky was concerned. His solace is in how fiercely Bucky returns the kiss, how miraculously he’s trusted Steve in the last year when it would be logical for him to never trust another human again, how humbling it’s always been that Bucky – sweet and beautiful and good – could have had anyone he wanted, and only ever wanted Steve.  
  
“Hey,” Bucky murmurs to him, hand wrapped around the back of Steve’s neck to still him.  
  
Steve realizes he hadn’t just wanted to roll over on top of him, but had actually done it, his body taking over as his tired brain lagged behind, pressing Bucky down into the mat. He lifts his head, blinks down into sky blue eyes and faint freckles on his nose from the sun and soft brown hair splayed on the pillow.  
  
“You need to sleep,” Bucky says. One corner of his mouth is lifted in a half-smile, and his thumb rubs along the nape of Steve’s neck.  
  
Steve drops his head back down, resting his forehead against Bucky’s.  
  
“A couple more hours,” Bucky continues, soft, caring words spoken in the miniscule space between their lips. “When you wake up, we can do whatever you want. We don’t have to leave this bed for the next 24 hours, if that’s what you want. You just gotta sleep first.”  
  
“I’m okay,” Steve argues. He’s lying, but sometimes their time is so limited. He never knows, when he’s here, how soon he’ll be called away again.  
  
“I love you,” Bucky says to him, “but I’d rather you not pass out on top’a me with your dick in my ass.”  
  
Steve snickers, shoulders shaking as he laughs and Bucky does as well, underneath him. Steve rolls off, onto his back, pulling Bucky back into his arms. “Alright, that’s fair.”  
  
“I’ll be here when you wake up.”  
  
“You don’t have to stay.”  
  
“I know I don’t have to.” Bucky kisses Steve’s chest, and pillows his head on it. “I want to.”

**Author's Note:**

> [come talk to me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


End file.
